Monday, February 8, 2010

"You tried to shoot me in the head, my gun got nicked, and I'm still in fucking Bruges!"

I had been dying to see this movie. A rollicking, slap-stick, action comedy, right? I mean, he's holding an ice cream cone, and a gun. Hilarity, do your worst!

Actually, In Bruges is a fairly serious film, with a lot of comedic elements. I don't want to give too much away, but the basic premise is that Ray (Collin Farrell), a rookie hit-man, killed the wrong person as collateral damage when doing an execution. His boss, Harry Walters (Ralph Fiennes), sends Ray and another hit-man Ken (Brendan Gleeson), to Brussels to hide out for a while. Ken loves the old town, and Ray, a Dubliner, hates it.

It is a serious film, with the various players coming to terms with what they do, and why they do it. The end has a nice ironic twist, and it is paced nicely. It is terribly funny at times, and Farrell gets all the great lines. His accent gets a bit muddled, but not too bad. The films is almost what you could call a hardboiled comedy. These are tough, dangerous men, but they are human still. There is not a lot of gunplay or fisticuffs, but the climax gets to be quite exciting.

I think they sold this movie in a terrible fashion; not that it would have done too much better if an accurate portrayal was made in advertising, but I would imagine that the comedic façade may have kept some serious film fans away. It gets my seal of approval despite not being what I expected.

4 comments:

This was one of my favorite movies of 2008, which was a pretty good year. This and its polar opposite of sorts, Happy Go Lucky. This made me appreciate Farrell, and I can't wait to see more from the writer/director.

I saw this fairly recently! Actually thought it was pretty awesome =] I don't normally like 'boy films' like running round shooting people types, but this was a little special. A was giggling all the way through, whilst still having all the serious elements to worry about - hoping everything will be ok. Colin Farrell is normally really pretty, but I don't know in this... there was something going on.